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Research for Policymakers, Researchers, and Others

Upcoming Reports and Guides for Health Care Professionals

Glossary Terms

Study: A research process in which information is recorded for a group of people. The information is known as data. The data are used to answer questions about a health care problem.
Comparative Effectiveness: A type of health care research that compares the results of one approach for managing a disease to the results of other approaches. Comparative effectiveness usually compares two or more types of treatment, such as different drugs, for the same disease. Comparative effectiveness also can compare types of surgery or other kinds of medical procedures and tests. The results often are summarized in a systematic review.
Clinical Research: The branch of medical science devoted to finding information that improves people's health. It includes research studies that examine the safety and effectiveness of medications, medical devices, diagnostic tests, and treatment regimens intended for human use. Usually, more than one person with the same disease is studied.
Effectiveness: Whether a drug or other treatment works in real life. Effectiveness studies of drugs look at whether they work when they are used the way that most people take them. Effectiveness means that most people who have the disease would improve if they used the treatment.

Research for Policymakers, Researchers, and Others

Types of Research from the Effective Health Care Program

The Effective Health Care Program produces three primary products:

Research reviews: These comprehensive reports draw on completed scientific studies to make head-to-head comparisons of different health care interventions. They also show where more research is needed.

There are two types of research reviews:
1. Comparative effectiveness and effectiveness reviews outline the effectiveness — or benefits and harms — of treatment options.
2. Technical briefs explain what is known — and what is not known — about new or emerging health care tests or treatments.

Original research reports: These reports are based on clinical research and studies that use health care databases and other scientific resources and approaches to explore practical questions about the effectiveness – or benefits and harms – of treatments.
Summary guides: These short, plain-language guides — tailored to clinicians, consumers, or policymakers — summarize research reviews’ findings on the benefits and harms of different treatment options. Consumer guides provide useful background on health conditions. Clinician and policymaker guides rate the strength of evidence behind a report’s conclusions. The guides on medications also contain basic wholesale price information.

Methods Guides and Methodological Research

The Effective Health Care Program is continuously involved in research to improve the methods of comparative effectiveness and effectiveness inquiry. You can search for guides and research reports related to your specialty or area of interest.

Systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness studies follow a continually updated methods guide. You can access the draft guide, orginally posted for comment in 2007, or see the updated draft chapters.

Policymaker Guides

Policymakers can review the executive summaries of comparative effectiveness reports to get the bottom-line findings from the research. Policymaker summaries are also being created for upcoming reports, providing policymakers with a clear, brief summation of the key findings for each topic.

Comparative Effectiveness News

Keep up with new advances in comparative effectiveness research, health communication, shared decisionmaking, and other topics related to the mission of the Effective Health Care Program by reading our newsletter.

Coming Soon: Products for Continuing Medical Education Faculty

Future comparative effectiveness reports will be translated into slide sets and other instructional tools for medical education professionals. We anticipate having our first educational tools available in January of 2010.